Reflections on Uranus in Taurus

A lot can happen in 7 years. The astrology of the earth-shattering shifts that the Uranus transit through Taurus triggered for me and what to do when Uranus comes for you. Hint: resistance is futile.

A spread representing Uranus’s transit through my 9th house and its most impactful aspect, the conjunction with my natal moon, using the Heavenly Bodies Astrology deck by Lily Ashwell.

As revolutionary Uranus prepares to enter the sign of Gemini on Monday, July 7th, I think it’s safe to say that I am not remotely prepared for what’s to come. I am still processing the events of the last seven years, during which Uranus conjoined both my Moon and Venus. As it moves through Gemini, it’ll head towards my Sun and Mercury for another round of Intense Personal Transformation™. Mom, can you pick me up? I’m scared.

There has been a lot of buzz and speculation among astrologers and others about what this Uranus transit through Gemini will bring the collective. Uranus is a planet that represents sudden change, revolution, disruption, innovation, restructuring, and enlightenment. Gemini is a Mercury-ruled sign (symbolized by the twins) that is associated with communication, short-distance travel, the conscious mind, and dualism, to name a few significations. How this combination will ultimately manifest, only time will tell. We can make a few guesses. The breakout of civil war in the United States? The implementation of Artificial General Intelligence on a collective scale? The normalization of fully autonomous cars? The entrenchment of the digital surveillance state?

However, today I’m not here to speculate about what this transit will bring. (I will leave that work to better-equipped individuals. Although it intrigues me, I am NOT an astrologer.) What I would like to do, however, is look back at the last seven years and reflect on what Uranus’s transit through Taurus ultimately signified, in my own life.

I encourage you to think about the period from May 15, 2018 to July 7, 2025. How different is your life today from May of 2018? Depending on how your chart is configured, the changes may not have been as dramatic or overt for you. Those with personal placements (Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury or Venus) in fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius) or on the angles (houses 1, 4, 7, 10) are most likely to have felt this transit strongly.

Unlike the inner planets, the outer planets (also called generational planets) move very slowly, with transits ranging from 2.5/3 years (Saturn) to 12 to 20 years (Pluto). Their effects on a collective level are often (at least partially) discernible in real time, but when it comes to our personal lives, there are so many factors muddying the waters that I’ve found that I can only really grasp the purpose and impact of these transits after they are complete.

So, let’s get into the Uranus in Taurus story.

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Uranus takes about 84 years to move through the whole zodiac. This means that it spends 7 years in each sign. Let’s start with some words from astrologer Stephen Arroyo to understand what a Uranus transit means:

“By transit, Uranus cuts away the old and revolutionizes one’s way of being in the area indicated. It brings sweeping changes that have the effect of reorganizing (often disorganizing at first) one’s consciousness in order to permit new growth to come forth. Psychologically, it bursts into awareness in the forms of whatever ideas, feelings, and realizations were subliminal - i.e., just below the threshold of consciousness. Its transits, therefore, are inimical to repression of any kind. If an individual has been living in a repressed manner, a mode of life in which vital elements of his or her nature have been blocked, neglected, or ignored, it is almost certain that a transit of Uranus by conjunction, square, or opposition to one of the personal planets will bring to the surface with great immediacy an intense confrontation with these parts of the person’s nature. Uranus always speeds up the rhythm of nature…

Uranus, at its best, is the great liberator, the awakener, the illuminator which stirs up the person’s inner and outer life with such intensity that things are never the same afterwards.”

Stephen Arroyo, Astrology of Karma & Transformation

When Uranus transits the sign of Taurus, it brings upheaval, radical change, awakening, and expansion to the topics of stability, beauty, comfort, steady growth, physical embodiment, values, finances, and our orientation towards the material world.

I have the Moon and Venus in 9th house Taurus, at 7 and 12 degrees respectively.

The 9th house represents long distance (especially international) travel, higher learning/education, ideology and worldview, religion/spirituality, and philosophy.

Taurus is a fixed earth sign which rules over the neck, throat, and thyroid, finances, material possessions, sense of security, and connection to the physical world.

The Moon represents the archetypal feminine principle, the physical body, our feelings and emotions, intuition, memory, the capacity for imagination, the inner world and the mother/mother figure.

Venus represents our sense of aesthetics, social harmony, love, beauty, pleasure, our values, intimacy, self-worth, how we experience desire and how we relate to the world around us.

And now let’s just look at a few passages from Robert Hand’s Planets in Transit to set the stage for how Uranus interacted with these elements in my chart to create major change.